The present invention refers to a conveyor with automatic-repositioning trippable pushers.
At present, innumerable types of pusher conveyors are used for displacing products along paths of machines or into subsequent treatment stations.
Precisely on account of their nature, these conveyors present pushers arranged along their extension, which engage with the product or products to be displaced and displace them into the subsequent operating position. The need for having a reliable displacement in general entails the need for each pusher, or more generically the pushers that are provided along the conveyor, to be sufficiently rigid to carry out their job satisfactorily.
For example, in a chain conveyor one or more pushers are provided that are constrained to the chain at pre-selected intervals so as to engage on a product that is set on a sliding surface and is to be translated from a first position to a second position.
Should one of these pushers along its path come to interfere with an unexpected object or with a hand or other part of the body of an operator, an impact would ensue. This impact could lead either to breakage, or else to damage of both the pusher element and whatever has interfered with it. The situation of interference could even lead to injury of the machine operator.
This situation is easily solved by providing a pusher of a compliant type which has a trippable operating position when it is subjected to an external force. On the other hand, when the pusher has set itself in the tripped condition, after bumping into the obstacle, there arises the problem of its re-positioning in operation, which must be performed by the operator who is running the conveyor or the machine.
All this entails loss of time and calls for considerable attention on the part of the operator, who must keep under control the positions of all the pushers, setting the ones that for some reason have been sent down back in the operating position.
It may thus be understood what are the problems associated to a conveyor with pushers of this sort.
A purpose of the present invention is to provide a conveyor with pushers that can be tripped in the event of accidental impact of one of them against an unexpected obstacle, such as an external element, or against a part of the body of an operator, which is able, once it has undergone impact, to reset itself in the working position without any external intervention.
Another purpose is to obtain a conveyor with trippable pushers that can be easily and quickly adapted to various sizes of products to be pushed.
Yet another purpose is to provide a conveyor with trippable pushers that can be quickly adapted according to the weight and overall dimensions of the products treated.
These and other purposes according to the invention are achieved by providing a conveyor with automatic-repositioning trippable pushers according to claim 1.
Further characteristics of the conveyor are evident also from the ensuing claims.